Crawling arthropods, for example, insects and arachnids, can be pests, particularly when they are found in inhabited buildings such as homes, workshops, storage sheds, and the like. The pestiferous nature may range from annoyance when non-biting, non-disease vector arthropods invade a residence or other living space, to health threats when, for example, venomous, stinging, and/or disease vector pests such as certain spiders, or the like, are encountered. Crawling pests may be particularly undesirable in settings that are especially sensitive to health considerations, such as facilities used in the food processing industry.
One common approach for controlling such pests is through the use of pesticides or other poisons. However, such poisons may present health hazards of their own, and may be undesirable for other reasons, including the risk of causing harm to beneficial insects or to other animals, risks or damage to the environment, and risks to children and pets.
A common, non-poisonous approach to controlling pests is through the use of adhesive or sticky substrates, such as flypaper strips, to capture and immobilize pests. Flypaper strips are commonly used to capture flying insects, for example, and similar adhesive panels have been used to capture other arthropods. For example, commercial spider traps are available that comprise a tubular substrate such as cardboard having an adhesive applied to an inner surface. Such pests that enter the tubular substrate become stuck to the adhesive. An exemplary prior art trap is shown, for example, in FIG. 9 of U.S. Pat. No. 5,588,250, to Chiba et al. Chiba et al. is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. As used herein, unless clearly intended otherwise the term “insects” will generally include, but is not limited to, arachnids and true insects. Also, as used herein the term “crawling insects” includes, crawling arthropods whether they crawl exclusively or are also able to fly or engage in other modes of locomotion.
However, such traps typically must be handled after the pests are trapped in the adhesive, which may cause some risk and anxiety regarding whether the trap contains any recently trapped pest that might still pose a threat to the user. Another disadvantage to such traps is that they are typically have limited access, for example having an entry on only one or two ends of the trap. The high directionality of such a trap limits its effectiveness, particularly for crawling pests, because entrapment requires that the pest approach or encounter the trap from a particular direction.
It would be beneficial to provide a trap for crawling arthropods that provides protection to the user when emptying the trap, and that provides near-360 degree access to the trap.